ating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in
it--a broken and irregular cadence. It seemed to him that it was like
a titanic voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily metallic--the voice of
the god, Bigness. And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its
servants.

"Come and work!" it seemed to yell. "Come and work for Me, all men! By
your youth and your hope I summon you! By your age and your despair I
summon you to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have. By
your love of home I summon you! By your love of woman I summon you! By
your hope of children I summon you!

"You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, your
Master and Driver! For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness.
You shall give your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and
worship of my ugliness! You shall perish still worshipping Me, and your
children shall perish knowing no other god!"

And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's
voice booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words but
the tone was exultant--and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed
hand. Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of
Bigness to some visitor from out-of-town.

And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness. But
with the old, old thought again, "What for?" Bibbs caught a glimmer of
far, faint light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled
and conquered, and must all his life go on struggling and inevitably
conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own. Sheridan served
blindly--but was the impulse blind? Bibbs asked himself if it was not
he who had been in the greater hurry, after all. The kiln must be fired
before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis was not crowned with marble
in a day.

Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of
some high music struggling to be born of the turmoil. "Ugly I am," it
seemed to say to him, "but never forget that I AM a god!" And the voice
grew in sonorousness and in dignity. "The highest should serve, but so
long as you worship me for my own sake I will not serve you. It is man
who makes me ugly, by his worship of me. If man would let me serve him,
I should be beautiful!"

Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in
the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a gigantic
figure with feet pedestaled upon the g